What I ate today

For some reason I wasted my whole afternoon cooking. I hate doing that because I have so much to do. I wish the food would just magically appear on the table at meal times, but it won't, so I must cook it myself.

The good news is that many salad ingredients are available in my vegetable garden. It is a bit later than usual this year, but things in the garden are coming along and much of it is ready to eat.

Except for the corn, which is nowhere near ready yet, everything in this salad came from my garden. There are two types of green leaf lettuce, some red lettuce, baby swiss chard leaves, baby beet leaves, baby spinach leaves, a spring onion, some kale, a stalk of celery, and a bit of mustard greens. As a special bonus, there were a few cherry tomatoes ready.

To go with this salad, I made a cottage pie. Cottage pie is a dish that originated in the United Kingdom and Ireland and was popular with working class people. The reality is that cottage pie is not so much a pie as it is a casserole. Essentially, a cottage pie consists of meat and mashed potatoes baked together in a dish. Cottage pies use beef, while the very similar 'shepherd's pie' are made with mutton.

In Canada, most people use ground beef, mashed potatoes, and creamed corn to create a cottage pie. The curious thing, however, is that they tend to call it a shepherd's pie even though mutton is rarely used. In fact, I have never seen mutton for sale in any market. Occasionally there is some goat meat that is marketed for use in South Asian or African cooking, but I have never once seen a leg of mutton available in the shops. There is lamb, however, but the price is dear and only a purist would use lamb in their shepherd's pie.

Ultimately, Canada's most affordable meat has been ground beef or ground pork, and it is these less expensive ingredients that get used in a budget friendly dish such as cottage pie. I personally use ground beef in my pie.

Here is my dinner plate of salad and a generous scoop of cottage pie. While baking in the oven, the mashed potato 'crust' gets crispy on the outside, but remains fluffy on the inside. The trick is in how the mashed potatoes are prepared. I whip together butter, a bit of prepared horseradish sauce, milk, and 2 beaten egg yolks. The potatoes are then spread over the layer of meat, and another layer of creamed corn. Then, while in a hot oven, all layers bake together with the potatoes forming a delicious crust.

I made enough to last a couple of days so hopefully I will not have to cook tomorrow.

This is a 100% POWER UP! post.